Is Earth a Prison Planet?

TL;DR probably not but who knows, also it doesn't matter.

I've been encountering this idea lately in the wilderness of memespace. I have a friend who has been concerned about this being the fact and they have been quite shook up about it. I also recently discovered a 'schizo' YouTube channel that makes videos with the main focus of this topic. And strangely enough I watched a spirituality and AI podcast episode where the interviewer had a strong emotional disavowal of the idea, which no shade, I share similar sentiments to her.

So let's put on our investigation cap and have a go at the idea :) This friend came to me a while ago, raving about Archons and escaping the Matrix and the soul-trap and so on. I thought I had gave a good answer, but apparently not good enough or anyways the idea still lingered with them and they recently came to me again on the matter. I had originally said basically: 'Schizo' stuff like that is fun to look into but the real truth is more complicated than that and a matter of perspective.

Before diving in, I'll lay out some basic disclaimers. 1. I have not deeply looked into the specifics of Prison Planet Theology, so I'm sure I'm making flaws and missing nuance, etc, but I still think I have valuable thoughts worth sharing on the matter. Maybe if someone comes to me ass-mad, I can revisit this topic. 2. I'm not part of any defined school, lineage, etc, and these thoughts probably won't be entirely consistent with what I have said and will say in the future. 3. Hence, I will be approaching this from I spose a 'Zen Mystic' perspective. I called myself that recently so we're gonna roll with that identity label for the time being. I have various levels of buy in, on various topics/views of spirituality and the "New Age" so yeah. I am not entirely surface-level-ly consistent with any one doctrine or dogma, likely.

So let's start with picking apart what we mean by a 'prison planet' to begin with. Well a prison is somewhere you are forcibly confined to and cannot leave, that imposes restrictions on what you can or cannot do—I think this is where we'll see the idea already starts to break down—I do think the idea of crime is also tied into this as well (as I'll explore later with the idea of Karma as reward or punishment). Unless you want to get fairly pedantic and say that suicide is a choice for escape, this planet is in fact a prison in some sense. Unless you're Beff Jezos you can't fly off our planet; without a rocket you are here and incarnated into a body at least until your death. The first issue is that any kind of 'incarnation' into material reality is going to involve limitations. Reality has limitations, otherwise it wouldn't be reality, it would be fantasy or whatever, point being reality is limited, definitionally by it being real.

I think the most important thing as a spiritual seeker is—skepticism, doubt. You must negate everything until you find what is precisely True. To me, this Prison Planet Theory mostly seems to have at it's kernel, from the framing of this YouTuber: The Problem of Evil. Which I've taken a better liking to the verbiage, Mystery of Evil. Or essentially suffering. Why suffering?! Why must we be in prison?!? This question seems to be the main reason for the conclusion. So we are assuming suffering is 1. forced upon us. 2. bad.

Which yeah I agree suffering is bad and that circumstances will unfold that contain the cause of suffering. But if you are going to make ultimate metaphysical claims; I think you need to be careful. Those who are familiar with Buddhism will likely know, that Buddhism talks about suffering, and offers medicine for it. One of the three marks, basically the characteristics of being an existent being is dukkha, i.e. suffering. The signs of an existing-being itself, a being nestled or present in reality include suffering. Reality is kind of contact with a thing that is beyond you, so definitionally it just seems like it will constrain you. Your mind is in the medium of the material world and thus is constrained by the medium. I'd be curious to learn how this YouTuber builds a consistent metaphysics.

The video makes critiques on Karma, and the New Age idea of 'learning lessons', which yeah I also find the learning lessons speculation a bit silly. Like a lot of people, I think he misunderstands Karma though. Karma is just cause and effect (and conditions). That's it. It isn't a tally point system that some god uses to judge you and hold you back from second grade, rewarding or punishing you. Which brings us to talk about Samsara. Karma keeps you 'trapped' in Samsara. Whether that be Good Karma, or Bad Karma; which Samsara is basically the Buddhist idea of the prison-planet. So you would have to learn lessons for good karma? Karma is basically action* that causes you to be tangled up into the world's chain of cause and effect. That's it.

So I'll attempt to lay out an alternative view, that I think is a better model for what's going on, and one I think we can definitely say requires less assumptions of unknowns to me at least (and sort of side steps the prison-planet theory by incorporating and dissolving it). If you are going to just pluck out ideas of what is happening metaphysically, you can't just only pluck out one single model and assert its true; that's only one point of evidence. So I want to talk about the other two main modalities on what's going on, with the concept of "Divine Essence" in the "Material World".

So what is Samsara and Nirvana? Is it a prison?? Well whether or not you believe in literal reincarnation aside. It has to do with your attachment and realization. Samsara is just basically being on the marry-go-round. And eventually you can realize, oh wait I'm on a marry-go-round, and can get off. That's it. It's not evil, nirvana isn't blessed. They are just awareness and consciousness, and ignorance of awareness and consciousness. (And you can even become aware and conscious if evil demon Archons don't want you to; see the story of Buddha's enlightenment and him encountering the demon Mara.)

If you don't wanna be on the marry-go-round, you can just realize you are on it and get off. Simple as. It's easier said than done, because most people don't actually want to. They like pleasurable activities, they like existing and experiencing stuff. Yes they dislike pain and suffering and the hardships that come from attachment, but they don't want to detach (also this dislike is itself a form attachment, just in the negative direction). So they are like "Oh no! I'm stuck on a Prison Planet!" all the while their attachment to the idea of not-prison (pleasure or the positive experiences of life) vs prison (bad stuff and suffering) and their ignorance of what is going on keeps them here all the while.

So we have three basic models or lens of viewing the world at the metaphysical level relevant to the topic. Samsara & Nirvana, The Lila of Maya, and like the Gnostic view. All of them share "Divine Essence" incarnating to experience. I think the Buddhist Samsaric view is adequate to cover across most of the ideas. We can say: what we can say about what's happening? "Okay, we*'re minds* here existing, what does this mean?" And filling in the rest really depends on perspective and guess-work. Which you can't really know like actually, epistemically what is going on really. Are we just an expression of Divine Essence playing with itself because games, stories and movies are fun and being pure potential i.e. Emptiness itself pretty boring and uneventful? E.g. are we Lila in the dream of Maya? Or has our essence somehow been tricked to inhabit the material world and we need to escape? How about both and neither. Practically it doesn't matter and practically you don't need to sperg out about it.

The Practical Answer

So what is this practical answer that steps over and solves this situation? You just need to GNO bro. That's a pun on "know" and Gnosis, i.e. to achieve Gnosis, as the Gnostics talk about, or Enlightenment as the Buddhists call it. Whatever you wanna call it. It is realization of the primal truth kernel that is the existence and nature of your mind. And you do this by ungodly skepticism and meditation practices to realize the true nature of your mind. Which you can find instructions on how to do this from any mystic tradition, you can also just keep at it on your own and eventually figure it out, but you might as well skeptically test out the resources that others have left us. You have to go it alone anyways because it is a process that is individual and occurs as you, not as anyone else, you have to take yourself there yourself. Guides and teachers can still provide tips and tricks.

Okay, still not practical? Still worried? Well the video mentions NDEs and loved ones ushering you to the light—And them being Archon tricks... which is actually somewhat accurate even in Buddhism. No one can know what awaits you upon death. Maybe your materialistic atoms just disperse and your mind was somehow materially generated (highly dubious and dependent on our limited understanding, e.g. we understand what conscious experience is enough from a materialistic view to assign causes and conditions to it and distinguish it from all other conscious experience (no eternal recurrence, nor infinite space and multiverses, nor quantum immortality)—excluding the materialistic view of death which (you can't really prepare for nor avoid), you can practice meditation that's probably mostly enough. Having other attachments and not having probed your mind though will prove troublesome. What the Tibetan Book of the Dead and Buddhism talks about is the stage(s) of Bardo and the distraction of the lights. So basically, your mind will be ripped from the material world, into basically whatever, I'd label it as the vast potentiality of everything, the void, the abyss whatever. You will be your mind and your pure mind. This is why knowing your mind is crucial. Much like dreaming. It's not much different. And this is where Karma comes in, you will cling to and avoid phenomena as they replay in your mind (the Bardo lights), just like you did in life, just as phenomena manifests to you now and you think and feel and experience everyday. If you can avoid getting drawn into stuff, you can "escape" and do whatever better thing there is for you to do after that point.

Humorously, the creator of this video is also against meditation. Which being able to sit, observe and detach from your thoughts, feelings and manifest phenomena is literally how you can prepare for this state. That's why meditation is actually the most crucial practice to escape it. Which I think demonstrates why being motivated by pathos of these 'schizo' ideas is not great. 'Oh no! Look suffering! Everything is evil and out to get me!' Then you become so paranoid and fearful that you avoid being able to critically discover and do the actual thing that matters in 'saving' you. The YouTuber didn't really have a good understanding of meditation, which is okay, he can think what he wants, but he might have trouble actually getting what he desires, e.g. exiting Samsara. He does seem to be into lucid dreaming, so that will probably largely help. I think that is still a bit removed from the nature of mind itself, but I definitely think it increases ones odds. You'll probably end up wandering the Astral o algo which hey, you may find that better than reincarnating into the "prison planet". But, like I said, death can only be answered by dying. So meditate, learn the nature of your mind, and find out for yourself when the time comes.

What about to the suffering on Earth? Well, we as humans are extremely capable of making things better, so be kind and compassionate, and study and teach others to free their minds as well. That's what you can do. Play the best game of chess you can, enjoy yourself, take things lightly, or don't take things super direly seriously, doesn't really matter what you do. You're here for whatever unknown reason, so take the opportunity to live out an authentic human life for your person.

There was an Alan Watts quote or some video I watched long ago on YouTube, that talked about how everything is playing the game: "This is serious." is the thought on loop over and over. Every thing, being and form is engrossed, attached, entangled into the game. So play the game or not. There is not really anything else to do. There's no reason to freak out (or not to freak out). Are their evil multi-dimensional beings loosh harvesting the energy of our suffering?—keep in mind decomposers exist in Earth ecosystems—Idk maybe and probably, the thing with all these demons, etc, is they are parasitic and they require your participation. David Icke talks of Wetiko, this kind of evil mind demon plaguing people and a lot of his work parallels this soul-trap stuff. Just don't be soul-trapped, simple as. Don't feed the schizopathic trolls lol. Learn how to deal with the nature of mind and the multiverse is yours my friend.

“We choose ignorance because we can. We choose awareness because we can. Samsara and nirvana are simply different points of view based on choices we make in how to examine and understand our experience. There's nothing magical about nirvana and nothing bad or wrong about samsara. If you're determined to think of yourself as limited, fearful, vulnerable, or scarred by past experience, know only that you have chosen to do so, and that the opportunity to experience yourself differently is always available.”
— Yongey Mingyur Rinpoche, The Joy of Living

This friend came to me again on the topic. Saying they wanted to throw away worldly desires and pursue enlightenment and nirvana. Instead of saying all this stuff. I opted to poke logical holes in reincarnation, and their ideas of soul, body, Samsara and Nirvana. Promoting skepticism, since last time elaboration of the knowledge, at least the way I had done so seemed ineffective.